Hiding The Grailstone
by Gojirob
Summary: A thoughtless action taken by Zephram Cochrane during the events of Star Trek : First Contact place the 24th Century in jeopardy, forcing Kirk and crew to consider some explosive options.


Hiding the Grailstone

by Rob Morris

MONTANA, EARTH, 2063

Lily saw the familiar-looking object. She prayed hard that it wasn't what she thought it was. Of course, that's exactly what it was.

As she raced to meet her quarrelsome friend and employer, she mentally strangled the old lecher slowly, and with glee. She knew enough of science and science fiction to know that she held a piece of chronal Kryptonite. Doctor Zephram Cochrane had screwed up, all while trying to screw a woman who wouldn't be born for almost three hundred years. The crafter of the future had almost destroyed it, and he still might, unless she acted quickly. The brilliant but self-indulgent man was chatting--if that was the right word--with their new acquaintances from Vulcan.

"Doctor--that music. Is it not very--loud?"

Cochrane was moving and grooving, on an all time cosmic high. He had the attention of his world, other worlds, and even other times.

"Yeah. Isn't it great?"

Lily knew exactly how to get the Vulcan to quickly move on. She turned on the tears.

"Zef--it's horrible! My boyfriend just left me--for a woman from--*Troy*!"

Cochrane knew the tears were phony--they had used them enough times to turn back creditors. He also knew Lily well enough to know that the use of the name Troy was deliberate.

"Mister Ambassador--do you mind if I talk with her? Get her calmed down?"

As Lily and Cochrane had observed, almost any sort of expressiveness seemed to unnerve the visitors, so the Vulcan nodded and left. Lily pressed the object into her employer's hands, once he had left.

"You just *had* to paw at her, didn't you, old man? Now you tell me what happens if the Vulcans ever see this."

That day, Zephram Cochrane truly started to change, and not just because of his particular place in history. No, what now came at him was history's terrible, terrible fragility.

"No one--*no one*--must ever see this."

So it was that the object that could reshape or even destroy the future stayed hidden on Doctor Cochrane at all times. Even when, as space legends tell, he sought out deepest space--and was never heard from again.

* * *

GAMMA CANARIS SYSTEM, LATE 2269

The Shuttlecraft landed, and Nancy Cochrane, as the Companion now called herself, smiled to see it. Their friends had not been expected for another two years.

From it emerged the now familiar trio of Captain James Kirk, Commander Spock and Doctor Leonard McCoy. With them were a smiling man and lovely woman whom Nancy did not recognize.

"Commissioner Hedford?"

"Not quite, Captain Kirk. But we feel that part of us, as we always shall. In any event, I still call myself Nancy, and I am greatly pleased to see you, though I am puzzled. I had thought you were not coming till next year or perhaps later."

Kirk nodded.

"Our five-year mission is nearly done with. The Enterprise, my ship, faces a major refitting. There was no guarantee we could make that rendezvous, then. So we're here to make sure that all is well---and to check in on an oddity that long-range sensors have detected in this region."

She thought for a moment.

"Is that oddity myself?"

Spock took this one.

"No. Your energies are now only discernible when a scan is conducted within a few hundred feet. This oddity--this anomaly--is temporal in nature."

Kirk pointed to the two newcomers.

"Myself, Spock and Doctor McCoy you already know. This is Commander Montgomery Scott---"

What sounded to Nancy like a standard response came from Scott.

"--but everyone calls me Scotty."

"---and this is Lieutenant Uhura, though we hope to soon rectify that upward."

The woman, Uhura, seemed a bit thrown by Kirk's statement, as though an unspoken affection had briefly become blatant. Nancy started herself for a moment when she realized that this stunning creature would be the first woman Zephram had seen other than herself in over 150 years.

"A pleasure. The Captain's revelation about this place floored all of us."

Nancy recalled a saying that Hedford had known.

"Captain--Benjamin Franklin had said that three people may keep a secret well, but only if two of them are dead at the time. You have expanded upon that original circle."

Kirk looked with intense pride, perhaps even familial pride, at his four companions.

"There are six exceptions to that rule that I know of."

Spock shook his head.

"In fact, there are seven."

With that out of the way, the five proceeded with Nancy to the small dwelling. A floating cart carried the supplies. Zephram Cochrane awaited them all.

"Captain! Oh, it's so good to see all of you again. Nancy and I love the solitude, but solitude needs to be defined by a break, after all."

Uhura definitely caught Cochrane's eye, but only for a moment that Nancy could see.

"Everyone--I've prepared some steamed vegetables, so its dinner and then we'll talk."

They did indeed sit down at a table Cochrane had fashioned, at Nancy's insistence.

"Captain?"

"Yes, Doctor Cochrane?"

"Tell me about your lives. The cosmic politics of it always seemed a blur to me. Nothing too personal. But things like that make me feel connected to the universe beyond us."

As they ate, and dipped the vegetables into an orange-derived sauce of Cochrane's inventive creation, they also dipped into their lives.

"....Mother says that Saavik's progress is stellar. Grandmother Grayson is a bit more blunt about it, as is her wont. I hope to be there when she first sees Vulcan. Though that is still a time away...."

"...Mom says that Peter's actually sleeping without nightmares. His younger brother is another story. But get this. He's 9 years old--and has a girlfriend...."

"....she wants to see me. All the bitterness, all the chronic avoidance of Georgia and her mother. But my baby still wants to see me...."

"....so I'm not sure just what occurred between Jessa and her young beau. Suffice it to say that three or more articles of clothing were on the floor rather than on them. Well, her four-year old brother walks in on them, and says 'Uncle Monty....why is Cissy doing that?', but of course I'm hundreds of light years away, and she nearly swatted him across...."

"....so I had to write back to a group of disappointed kids I've known since their births that Enterprise cannot and will not be landing on Kilimanjaro when we get back. You'd think I'd told them of our surrender to the Klingons..."

Nancy was reminded by all this talk to have Leonard McCoy analyze her--and see if pregnancy was possible. But that would come later. For now, dinner was finished, the supplies were put away, and the hard business of why The Enterprise crew was there would begin.

"You've come early because of the signal, I take it.", said Cochrane.

Kirk nodded and added, "If it is a signal."

Spock shrugged, and said, "Its pattern is most consistent with that of a signal. A homing signal, though we cannot at this time discern what it is saying."

Cochrane sighed. He had already told Nancy this story, and it had upset her, but now that was past, and she merely tried to project support.

"Gentlemen--Miss Uhura. Two hundred and six years ago, I participated in events that altered human history. You all know of it. What you do not know is that I also did something fairly loathsome and by so doing, I may have condemned the very future---that made that day possible."

Kirk started openly, and then spoke shocking words to his crew.

"Under penalties that may possibly include the invocation of General Order Seven, I order that each of you take what we are about to be told *to your graves*. This order applies to myself as well, and I hereby order you to immediately relieve me of my command and bind me over to Starfleet, should I violate it. Is the order known and understood?"

In an almost eerie unison, the crew responded.

"For every crewmember present, the order is known and understood."

"Doctor Cochrane, you may continue, but I ask that you show discretion in what you reveal, even under these strictures."

Nancy saw her man more than a bit nervous. He wasn't proud of this secret.

"Many rumors and legends exist, concerning the day of Terran First Contact. That I was originally a lost Alpha Centauran traveler who built warp as a way of getting back home. That my work was funded by a secret race of Immortals, looking to advance mankind beyond the Earth. That I built The Phoenix to escape the inquisitions of The Post-Atomic Horror. People forget their timelines rather quickly. Some mildly racist theories even had the Vulcans as the lost travelers, and me giving warp drive to them--just as Khan Singh reemerged, like Nero in Revelations. None of those rumors are of course, even remotely true. Especially the one that pegged me as Johnny Archer's real father. I never once touched a married woman, especially one married to a friend like Hank Archer."

Scotty seemed to realize something.

"Doctor--there was one other major rumor that ye seem to have omitted. The one that goes--ye were aided and abetted in your cause by travelers from another time."

McCoy rolled his eyes.

"Please do *not* tell me it was us. I hate when that happens."

Spock looked puzzled.

"I do not know, Doctor, that such a thing has ever---"

Then he just stopped, nodding for some reason or other.

So Cochrane resumed.

"There were two sets. One good, one very evil. The good ones didn't so much aid me as counter the efforts of the evil ones. But--they were indiscreet about how much information they gave me. Being quite overwhelmed, I'm afraid treated them all rather shabbily. One--a beautiful young woman--I out and out betrayed. I got her drunk, and then I attempted to remove her shirt, for the usual reasons that a lecherous middle-aged man tries to do something like that. In the process, what I've come to call the Grailstone fell off her uniform."

Kirk took this in.

"Uniform? Then she was part of a military-style unit. Doctor, what was her function?"

Cochrane looked to Nancy as though he wondered if he had said too much.

"Well, she seemed to be their staff psychiatrist. She was trying to calm me down. One of them was definitely a Captain, though. As The Phoenix rose, I even saw their ship. I made a drawing, if you'd like to see it?"

Kirk looked at his First Officer.

"First you. The deeper we go in this, the more I want someone whose silence can be guaranteed by various methods."

Spock nodded, and was given the aged paper. He looked it over, then spoke. "Doctor Cochrane--what is the registry number of the starship Enterprise?"

Cochrane shrugged. "Mister Spock, I'm sure I don't know."

Spock finally handed the paper to Kirk. The Captain winced to see the number in question.

"I've heard of them doing this--but that would mean there had been at least six---Doctor, how close did you come to their ship?"

"Actually, Captain--the Phoenix's camera caught the fine details. I destroyed the film, just to be on the safe side."

Kirk allowed some anger to show.

"Pity these time-travelers didn't believe in caution, or restraint. How could anyone be so reckless as to tell a man his future?"

Cochrane then jumped to his old allies' defense.

"Captain, their situation was desperate. The enemy I spoke of was quite implacable. I think they had even taken control of my friends' ship. They had no time to quietly introduce themselves."

McCoy now stepped in.

"Jim, you can't judge people you don't know based on information you don't have on their conduct in a situation you're not in. You should know better."

"I know, Bones. But for all the talk of me and my approach to the rules--I've kept to the temporal ones. They're too big to be messed with. Doctor Cochrane--show us The Grailstone."

Nancy saw Cochrane withdraw, and come out with a very heavy locked box.

"I've kept it with me at all times, especially when I ventured out as an old man. I considered simply throwing it into the sun--but I wasn't sure what would happen if I did."

The box was opened, and the Grailstone was revealed. It was a compact badge shaped like an Enterprise insignia. Kirk nodded.

"Starfleet had told me that they were considering adopting our emblem for the fleet. Spock--analysis?"

Spock took out his tricorder.

"Captain, many metals are wholly unknown to me. Others that are known have been crafted by means I can only guess at. The one thing I can currently confirm is that it is running very low on power. I must surmise that the device used up its reserves while attempting to have its signal fully penetrate Doctor Cochrane's strongbox."

Scotty was the next to offer analysis.

"Och, now this gadget starts the wheels ta' turnin'---so to speak."

Nancy now realized that this must have been Kirk's fear, that knowledge would be gained before its time, possibly jeopardizing the very future that produced the device.

"Explain, Scotty."

"Well, Cap'n--just by looking at it, I can see that power sources from our own communicators to the warp engines themselves can be miniaturized to a truly startling degree. Imagine a warp core that took up no more space vertically than does the center of our own Bridge! I feel like I'm readin' ahead in a good mystery."

When Uhura's turn came, she relented.

"Doctor McCoy should go first. I need to work something out in my head."

So McCoy did just that, shaking his head as he went.

"This little gem gives the receiving party as much medical information as I could give by conducting a complete physical. No---I take that back. Itself, it could only provide the basics. But a lot of very accurate basics. And that's not even its prime function."

"Uhura?"

"I'm ready now, Captain. It's obviously a communicator. But I believe it comes from an era where my function no longer exists as a separate task."

Nancy had expected Kirk to question how Uhura could know such a thing. But instead, he merely accepted that she did an obvious sign of confidence in his officer.

"Go on."

"Well, the device simply does too much to be the province of any one officer. It has a transponder, can serve as a locator, and it can probably beam a bee off your face. In the era this comes from, Comm must be something that virtually anyone can instantly access. A part of the furniture, if you will. If we wanted, I could even derive encoded names from the signal."

Kirk shook his head.

"That's exactly what we do not want. Options? Should we simply destroy it?"

Nancy saw firsthand the cohesion among these five, and why they were legends.

McCoy.

"Hell, Jim. You know my feelings on leaving loose cannon on history's deck. Get rid of it."

Scotty.

"No. I say we keep it as a secret means of one-upping the other powers. An edge they'll never have could easily keep the peace. From studying this thing, we could build the future it comes from."

Uhura.

"Or we could demolish it. Captain, everything about it bespeaks an era where what we know doesn't apply. I feel like a small child, peeking in my parents' bedroom, unable to properly take in what I'm seeing. It should be destroyed."

Finally, the one whose opinion Kirk held perhaps above his own spoke.

"Jim--I can only base my opinion on the facts at hand. We cannot permit further study of this device. It would be illegal, and potentially catastrophic. But in fact, we have already studied it. That damage is done. We will carry some aspect of that knowledge with us, for as long as we live. Therefore, we may not destroy the 'Grailstone' with impunity. Miss Uhura's reference to children is an apt one. But her conclusion is flawed. We 'children' must have this device as a reference point, in order that any knowledge gained from it may be corrected if it is later to be found incomplete or in serious error."

Nancy saw Kirk nod, and contemplated what decision he might come up with. Again, he went for the unexpected.

"Spock, with your father's permission, we'll secure it on Vulcan. Guarded by those lirpa-wielding giants, on a world of silence and oaths, it will be safe from both malefactors--and those with the best of intentions. Now, since we don't wish to draw undue attention to this sector, I suggest we leave, after Doctor McCoy does a final check on our hosts' health."

McCoy walked up and quietly pulled Nancy aside.

"Nancy--Commissioner Hedford's birth control is on the verge of expiring. Would you like me to renew it?"

She smiled. It had all been so simple. She possessed no disorder.

"No, Doctor. But--could you show me how to administer it myself?"

He did so, and left with the others. Only then did Zephram Cochrane approach her.

"Have you forgiven me yet?"

She nodded. The wrong had been an old one, and he was sincerely repentant of it.

"I have. But you must do one more thing to make it right, Zephram."

* * *

USS ENTERPRISE-E, 2374

Picard guided their honored guest through the halls of his mighty new ship.

"Frankly, Doctor Kirk, it's good to finally encounter you outside of a tragedy or your Exobiology course at The Academy. I never thought I'd pass it."

The 114-year old Peter Kirk nodded at his uncle's most noteworthy successor.

"Well, Captain, it's a bit of a circle for me. I was a child aboard the second Starship Enterprise, a problem aboard the third, a crewmember aboard the fourth--and you know the rest. I'm an old man aboard the sixth--maybe I'll die on the seventh or eighth."

Picard naturally avoided the subject of a Kirk dying entirely.

"I'm only sorry your wife couldn't make it as well. Admiral Saavik is always welcome here."

His face, so eerily familiar to Picard, took on an equally familiar smile.

"She is trying to cull talented youngsters from the ranks of The Academy. The Dominion will eventually leave us no choice but to fight, and we must be ready. The Odyssey's fate told me all we need to know. But--away with all that now. Captain--I need to deliver something to a member of your crew."

Deanna Troi responded to her Captain's summons. Doctor Kirk stared at her.

"Doctor, is there something wrong?"

The old man smiled.

"No, Counselor. You just remind me of someone I once knew. She was underappreciated like you, and like you she was very beautiful."

Taking the package he offered, Troi received back her commbadge--and an ancient hand-written apology.

"....so, Deanna, what you endured as you fended me off wasn't in vain. The badge always told me that there was a future ahead--that there was hope. That's why I called it for The Grailstone.

A Now-Reformed and Happily Married Rejuvenated Lech

Doctor Zephram Cochrane, Gamma Canaris, 2277."

From that day on, when someone would criticize James Kirk's keeping of Starfleet Law, Picard and his senior staff would talk of the extraordinary steps taken to ensure the safety of the world they all lived in, and how he acted quickly and decisively to protect The Grailstone.

THE END


End file.
